


the warlike turn against themselves

by hell_swan



Category: Warframe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, likely to be gay, no plot to speak of, slow exploration of ambiguity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 13:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15437943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hell_swan/pseuds/hell_swan
Summary: The distance between planets is longer than most Tenno care to think about, and time sits in those gaps like a scavenger, eager to exact its toll from the dreamers.-Growing up is hard to do when you're waist-deep in the ashes of your past.(stories from the system, centered on a girl, her dog, and the new wars)





	the warlike turn against themselves

She can't remember her name.

 

 

By itself, that's unremarkable. She can't remember a thousand things - her mother's face, her father's voice, who she  _was_  before she  _became_. There's a gas giant's worth of facts that used to be in her head, taking up space that's now filled by the ghosts of echoes and mundane routine. She can field strip her gilded Soma in under two minutes and have it reassembled in half the time, but she can't even remember her  _birthday_.

When she was first woken, when the Lotus dragged her out of purgatory and into the shattered remnants of empires, she was christened  _Surtr_. A call sign for the Lotus and her operatives to use, but also a nod towards the warframe she once thought of as her entire self, actual and whole. The Tenno gossip, then and now, and word eventually reached her that though many an Ember burned bright on the lanes, only a few were the wildfire of a Prime.

( _Surtr_ , the Lotus had said,  _an apocalypse and a gatekeeper from the myths of old Earth. No gods could stop his coming, just as no enemy will stop yours.)_

Now, she's leaning on the ramp that leads to the orbiter's bridge, studying her Ember at rest. Its flames are absent, fueled as they are by the Void in her bones, and it's slumped in its cradle. Absent her usual selection of weaponry, it almost looks harmless. It could be one of the countless sculptures or statues that survived the Orokin's fall. If, she thinks, one ignores the fact that there was no difference between a weapon and art to Orokin eyes. Function and form could be pushed to their breaking points with the right applications of ingenuity and force.

"Operator?" Dís is an anomaly among Cephalons, tentative and this close to fearful whenever her voice comes over the orbiter's comms. Useful, when she wants to be alone with the Void and stars that float on its quivering surface, but aggravating when there's work to be done.

"Yes, Dís?" She says, watching as her Ember shudders, its arms scraping against the sides of the cradle. The armory will hold, but it's one worry on top of a hundred others. Transference feedback that only just now shook out of the loop is her first guess. Her second jumps to the stories that circulate among the Tenno, ones about wisps of sentience locked away in their frames. She's been part of Ember for long enough that it feels like there's some truth to the rumors, though part of her balks at the idea of yet one more layer, one more abstraction.

"The Lotus wishes to speak with you, Operator." Dís says, cutting the line the moment her synthesizer spits out that last word. She sighs and pushes herself to stand. Aggravating, she decides. Definitely aggravating today.

For a moment, between the cracking of her spine and the everpresent hum of the orbiter's myriad systems, her mind returns to the unchangeable puzzle that started her contemplation: she can't remember her name. 

But she remembers the pull of duty, the way her chest caves in on itself when the warmth of accomplishment becomes the crush of responsibility, and opens a line to the Lotus. She greets her with a fond " _I have a task for you, Surtr_ ," and she thinks that it's enough, to be known and loved for the finality that heralds her arrival and precedes her departure.

Eventually, it will have to be enough.


End file.
